When my closest childhood friend and I were still sleeping over at one another's homes for recreation and not convenience, when we were wishing on glow-in-the-dark sticker stars, and when we were stuffing four years of memories in a metal Time Capsule, somewhere in between all of that, we used to quote Lewis Carroll to one another: "the time has come the Walrus said, to talk of many things..." We knew most of it by heart. Memorizing was in the blood of our friendship; we met as the two leads in a school play.

One year we saved hundreds of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips and sticky-tacked them to her bathroom wall. We used to collect banana stickers and coke tabs, I don't remember why. She was into collecting things--t-shirts and rocks and photos and things. She still is. I'm always awed by her collections. She makes mundane clutter look like art. And peace. Art and peace at the same time.

We lived less than a mile from one another, a bike ride or quick walk, but every few months we would have spontaneous Fun Mail Weeks where we'd package treasures in plastic bottles and Capri Sun boxes and band-aid tins and mail them to a mile away. It was so much more fun to get a tin plastered with first class stamps than anything else. I kept all the letters she wrote and stuffed in those odd canisters; they are packed away with the rest of my proof of life.

My family was her family, she and I stood in the delivery of my younger brother and watched first breaths together. Her family was my family, the scent of their home lingered on my clothes long after I left at night. If home for us is remembered in a scent, like laundry detergent or watermelon, then I feel most at home inside their aroma. Our families blended together and grew and ebbed. My brothers still talk about lullabies she sang to them and I'm not sure when her younger siblings became my friends too, but they did.

Her first camera was the mirror of my life. Chronicling everything we did together. She had more talent in a cheap film 35mm than anyone I knew. Her photos were alive: touchable. They still are, even if she's moved on to bigger and better equipment. The last time I was at her house I bent down and caught a glimpse of myself, seven years ago, in my favorite wool sweater. She shot it in the backyard of her old house, a graveyard, our playground. The other day I was packing some things up and pulled a photo out of the frame of my mirror: her and me on a South American adventure.

I remember little about the time surrounding my younger brother's death, save this: the night of April 19, 2000, my best friend lay beside me all night long, stroking my hair. I think she must have stayed awake all night because I drifted off and on, in and out, and every time I stirred she quieted me with her spirit. Every time. Through every moment of shocked disbelief that I have walked through in the past 12 years, through every elation and crushed disappointment, she has been constant.

She still sends me spontaneous mail, reminiscent of our Fun Mail Weeks. She is known to all by a nickname that my family pseudo-christened her with. She quotes me on her blog and makes me feel like a million bucks. She still likes to cuddle when we pass through our respective hometowns. She takes photos that stun me with their personality and depth. She loves people with absolute abandon and she loves them deeply and loyally. She loves God with a simple fervor I have never known anyone else to possess.

She is my friend. She is, to me, gold.